Almost four years ago, the idea of paying $20 a month for an AI chatbot that simply responded to your queries would have sounded ridiculous. ChatGPT was the tool that introduced millions of people to the concept of generative artificial intelligence, and paying a recurring subscription just to talk to an AI was hardly something most of us had budgeted for.

Cursed BIOS. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge When a company's software update turns your computer into a useless brick, should fixes be free? Framework, the modular computer startup, apparently thinks so. But it's not clear that computing giant Lenovo will go that far.Three weeks after a Redditor presented a nearly $300 repair bill for their handheld gaming PC - among other reports of damage and high repair bills - the company is breaking its silence. It says, in short: try holding down the power button longer, and if that fails, contact customer support.Here's the statement Lenovo provided to The Verge, via communications director Jeff Witt:Lenovo is aware that some Legion Go d …Read the full story at The Verge.

The creator of the world's first 3D-printed gun claims he's developed a way to thwart government-mandated software meant to block 3D printers from making firearms. It's an opening volley in what's shaping up to be an evolving battle between regulators trying to stem the tide of ghost guns and individuals trying to create workarounds. Cody Wilson, who claims to have made the detection-defying tool, is calling it "Hochulization" as a direct jab at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who pushed through the nation's first law mandating gun file detection software on new printers earlier this year. "New York is trying to reach into the internet and pol …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've owned many Fire TV Sticks over the years. They were a viable option until Amazon released the new Fire TV Stick with Vega OS. The locked-down, Linux-powered OS doesn't support sideloading Android apps, so I decided to graduate to a real Android device.

Using a chatbot that doesn't let you upload documents is almost unheard of these days - the document workflow is integral to an AI workflow now. And they've gotten really good at working with documents. However, the docs that would actually benefit the most from the summary-and-query treatment are also the ones you probably shouldn't be uploading to a cloud bot. A bank statement, legal doc, or medical test is exactly the kind of thing those of us who aren't legal or medical experts need help understanding.

Artificial intelligence has been around in one form or another for decades, but it's quickly growing in scope with the rise of the language models (LLMs). These tools are trained on massive amounts of text to understand, summarize, and generate human-like language. LLMs power hosted tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, while some models are released with downloadable weights that can be run locally (with the right hardware). They're great when used appropriately, but they can cause issues for software development.

Emulation is the easiest and most convenient way to experience a lot of classic titles these days, but for many games, there's something missing. Many classic titles relied on multiplayer support for their value, but they were designed to be played on the same console, not over the internet.

It's very easy to preach about a 3-2-1 backup scheme, but actually doing it takes time. It's not particularly difficult, but the money and effort requirement are often what keep most from actually implementing one. Since growing my family and beginning to move more things to the self-hosted realm, I realized that a cold storage backup for my NAS was now mission-critical.

Leverless fightsticks have been the craze of the fighting game community for the past few years, with many variations being released. Many of them could get quite expensive, but after learning a bunch about electronics, I realized they’re actually quite simple. I’m not serious enough about fighting games to buy an expensive leverless fightstick. Thankfully, I made a legitimately competitive one for cheap — and customized to my hands!

I confess I don’t turn off my main PC that often, but the times I have over the last year have felt like a struggle. It’s set to shut down when I press the power button because I don’t use hibernate or sleep on my desktop. But I’ve pressed the button and wondered whether my PSU or front-panel connector was failing, since the fans kept spinning even as my peripherals and screen went dead. The only thing that got it back was a ten-second press of the power button for a hard reset, and that’s not my intended behavior.

I use ultrawide monitors most of the time, so the first few minutes using this 3:2 display from BenQ was an adjustment. But once I got over the initial shock, I discovered how much nicer it is to read text. Or should I say rediscovered, because I grew up on 4:3 and 3:2 monitors, and I'd forgotten how much the added vertical space helps with productivity.F

It's always good to know where your data is going and who's selling it. If you use Plex, there's a good chance you'll see, or have already seen, a big data collection consent screen pop up that asks if you're okay with personalised ads. And while you can opt out of this data collection from this screen, users are reporting that Plex will sometimes opt them back in seemingly by itself.